…Optimise for productivity.
There’s a massive difference between work that’s regular, everyday routine activity and those new challenges that stretch you beyond what you’re familiar with.
You know the type of thing, where you have to do some research to even know where to start and where you tend to stumble your way through, making mistakes as you go, actively learning what works, what doesn’t, what order the components need to be assembled in, puzzling things out.
This effort is no doubt stimulating as we humans love problem-solving and creating new things but it comes with a cost too.
It’s a drain on your cognitive energy.
It’s the equivalent of heavy lifting or a hard session at the gym. We end up exhausted by the effort whilst overall we’ve become stronger because of the effort.
Capture the learning
Imagine, the next time you come to do the same activity, it may only be a few days since the first time so it’s still fresh in your mind but often its not. You can spend precious hours trying to remember what you did last time and then repeating the mistakes you made first time round because you forgot the sequence in which things needed to be done. You end up repeating the heavy lifting of the first time and put undue cognitive load on yourself.
A far better option is to capture the steps as you go through them the first time and create an action stack or checklist. It doesn’t have to be a a full-on instruction manual, just enough information so you know what action to take, where to get the information, what to do with it, where to put it, how to know when its done.
Do it while the satisfaction of learning is fresh. Make notes of why things need to be done in a particular sequence, what the implications are of doing it out of sequence.
It may not be perfect, you may discover neater, better ways of doing the activity but by having the basic process laid out you minimise the cognitive effort and time required to get it done in the first place and retain your mental energy for more creativity to enhance your output.
Be kind to your future self
A great way to think about creating action stacks is that you’re being kind to your future self. That version of you who will in two, four, six months time need to do this activity again will be extremely grateful and have a significant advantage when they use the list you’ve created today.
As the “future you”, be sure to acknowledge the previous you who’s given you such a great gift.
Be thankful as the gratitude forms a positive feedback loop which encourages you to create more action stacks and significantly level-up.
Be doubly kind to your future self
All well and good as long as you put the action stack where you’ll need to find it next time. There’s no point in putting in the investment to create the list in the first place if you can find it when you need it.
Personally, I keep all of mine in one place on Evernote, tagged as stacks. Again, minimising the cognitive load by only having one place to look. It’s electronic, searchable, accessible from anywhere, printable, easily edited and adapted.
That works for me but what would work for you? Where is the best place to keep your stack so your future self will know where to access it when the need arises?
Maybe you’re working in a team and this is a shared list that anyone could access?
Ask yourself, “Where will I be and what will I be doing when I need this information?”, work backwards from there to find the most appropriate place to put it.
To understand more about this, check out this post on creating a trusted system.
Drop me a line and let me know what you could or do use action stacks for. How could they improve your life? – get in touch and let’s explore working together
Andrew
Disclaimer: The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article. Andrew Marshman disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article.
